Barry joined Dec 1, 2010

Barry Collins is a successful Art Freelancer in the Games Industry with over 10 years experience working from remote for studios all around the world. In 2004 Barry was the lead artist on a mod called Eon, Which gained a lot of attention but eventually fell to the wayside for paying work to keep a roof over his head.
Knights is Barry's current indie endeavor, spending all of his time marketing, developing and art directing it.

I actually spent a week in the field (the field near my house) throwing rocks at other peoples fences... These fences sadly were not ravaged by 10 years of churning earth, but close enough. I tried gravel which had no effect, and eventually moved up to shot-put style. Before I knew it, the mans fence was largely decimated and his cows set free. I couldn't throw rocks that were much bigger than that, but when I dropped them onto the fallen/broken fence I had great fun and good results... after i got out of jail for vandalism I managed to simulate most of my findings in the game. Please keep in mind My fence breaker simulation is still early and needs some work.

Hey, 25 is really much more than just playtesting, but also giving input on the direction of the game... I went into this project with a lot less vision for it than I have now, But I am willing to give over a level of control to those keen on supporting the games development.

I was crunching the numbers, And it comes down to contract work or doing this... And if I am going to put a few more months into this game, it needs to cover my bills or i will be homeless and be worth giving up contract work on some level, so worth atleast a quarter of what I would make in one month doing my regular freelance work, 100 x 25 = 2500 dollars and makes the time organizing the test, the comments, the suggestions, the documentation and bug fixing etc worth while, realistically at that rate I will still need to be working part time, or depending on the response, accept more than 100 input/testers.

I may adjust the numbers to more testers and less of a price point, if this is a sore spot, But I also do not want to give away control to just anybody... 25 dollars seems minimal to have a level of control over something i have poured my heart and soul into. We shall see! I am open to suggestions, please do offer advice on this matter.

Im not worried, since this is just the name of one of our stories, the game is called Knights, the mission is called "spiral islands", the next one we work on will be hummingbell station, and the next one might be something equally random. you are the second person to mention that to me, and i have spotted spiral knights a few times in my searches a few times, but conceptually there are no similarities, and name wise it just shares two of the same words in a different order and meaning. Thanks for the tip tho, I may email the developers to see if its bothered them or anything.

the idea is just pre-orders, plus tip if so desired, I plan on doing a second Kickstarter run, based more on how i think kickstarter could be best used, rather than the way they suggest you use it.
A straight forward any pledge gets the game, add more if you really want to support us, and some basic unlockable content at 10+ dollar range. Maybe offer a few canvas prints etc for collectors/fans, but really ignore the structure of a typical kickstarter project or the way we have it set up currently.

The beach, the animations, the effects, all of it is the product of the last 3 weeks, its a slow process when you have 3 active members. but our team is expanding and so on.

And good tip, I forgot about that tutorial video, and we have 2 more in the works right now. It never occurred to me to post it here.

Fair Enough, This past week has been un-productive in an external sense since the GDC and Contract work is occupying the time of everyone on the team, We are just excited, and honestly, more than a pre-order or two, we just want a few more people to see knights, and hopefully get excited about it. gaining a few fans at this point is the most important thing.

the real news you want is boring, its a lot of "so our team is getting better organized and expanding. Also documentation has progressed and visual designs are progressing well" like, typical stuff, I was just amused by the video and hoped it'd catch the eye of a few people who haven't heard of knights.

hey, thanks for the compliment about Knights! glad you think its the best looking UDK game out there, this is early so lets hope we can keep it up eh? There are some other projects out there that blow me away, so we have to step it up :)